Sukhothai, Rain Storms, and the 4th of July!

We decided kind of last minute to go to Sukhothai, a city about 4 1/2 hours away, buy bus from Phrae.  It was the first capitol of Thailand, has a ton of ruins and is a World Heritage Site.  We booked a really nice guesthouse in Sukhothai for Saturday night and decided to play the rest of it kind of by ear.  We also invited our friends Jane and Erica, who live in the Nan province in a small, rural town called Taw Wang Paw, to meet us there. We were all pretty excited at this spontaneous trip.  First we had to take a 3 1/2 hour bus to Phitsanulok, where Mel and I found us a room to share for the night. It was cheap and ...interesting....but we just needed a place to crash before our bus to Sukhothai at 6 the next morning.  The room had a large bed, which we all four slept sideways on, and a huge cube-like structure in the corner with the shoilet. (bathroom/shower)  It was see through except for the curtains to give you a little privacy. It was pretty funny.
When Erica and Jane arrived at midnight, we went to go get a drink before turning in and happened upon an empty karaoke bar! I did it!  It was my first time, and it was perfect because it was to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” which my students sing to me all the time because they think Lady G and I are friends.  The DJ man kept playing Lady Gaga until Mel went up to make her own selection, Lady Marmalade! It was pretty fun.

The next morning we caught our early bus to Sukhothai.  We made reservations online at this place called the Pinpao Guesthouse, nice but didn’t break the bank.  When the songtau driver drove us there, a lady came out and told us it was closed because the owner was in Italy...SO THAILAND. She told us to go to his other guesthouse, the Orchid Hibiscus, which we saw but was twice as expensive! It was super pretty and nice but we didn’t want to pay more than we already had, but we didn’t have to, super cool! Check in wasn’t until 12 so we decided to hit the ruins! We walked to a bike shop and rented bikes for 30 baht for a day! ($1!!) The Sukhothai National Park is broken up into sections, North, Central, West, etc. and to get into a new section you have to pay 100 baht. We started with the Central section which has the main Wat, Wat Mahatat.  It is pretty big and beautiful!!! So many Buddhas and ruins:

Then we headed over to a pretty famous Wat, Wat Si Chum. It has a huge Buddha that has a large golden hand and is well known around Thailand.  It was beautiful and such a perfect day! 

More pics...

All of the heads were ripped off of this ruin :-(

We got a little sunburned... so we went back to our guesthouse and hung out at the pool.  They had these really nice cabanas so we swam, slept, read and ate. It was so nice. At night they have a pretty huge night market and we tried some different foods.  I had these chicken turnover things that were delicious! 

The next day we were pretty sore and sunburned so we hung out at the pool more and got ready to catch a noon bus back to Phitsanulok. First we had an AMAZING breakfast at the guesthouse.  They gave us honey with the honeycomb and bananas to drizzle it over...it was SO GOOD! They also had different jams and toast and eggs, yummy! 

After packing up and saying a reluctant goodbye we headed back to our little town.

It is now Thursday at 11:15 am and as I speak it has been POURING since 11pm last night! The school grounds are all flooded, I have never seen this much rain! I had to go from one building to the other, with shoes in hand, and the rain reached the lower part of my calves! It has reached half way up the wheel of the cars and motorbikes now! I guess this is the real rainy season! All of the kids are outside splashing in the little lake that has formed and running around screaming, it is pretty fun, but hard to teach during! 

Speaking of teaching, since it is the fourth of July, we are trying to teach about America! I lip synch the words to the “Star-Spangled Banner”  (I play the Carrie Underwood version and they all think it's me, it's great!), I show them where California is on a map of the US, show them pictures of fireworks and barbecues, and then have them draw and color a picture of the American flag! (Which they think is the Malaysian flag...) I guess it is pretty arrogant to assume they would know anything about American history but we were still pretty surprised to find out that they know absolutely nothing about America! When I show the map of the US, I have had multiple students ask where Thailand is on it...lol. But they were excited to draw and color the flag and have me take pictures of them!

My 6th graders!

My 4th graders, Noon and Mark! 

This weekend we are going back to Chiang Mai to have a western style weekend! We are going to try and see a MOVIE, eat Mexican food, and go to a mall! It is definitely going to be exciting! Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! Love you all!